In forming color photographic images, exposed light-sensitive materials having yellow, magenta and cyan photographic couplers in blue-sensitive, green-sensitive and red-sensitive light-sensitive layers, respectively, are subjected to color development processing using a color developing agent. In development processing, an oxidation product of an aromatic primary amine reacts with each of the above described couplers (coupling reaction) to give color dyes.
It is fundamentally important for the color dyes formed to be bright cyan, magenta and yellow dyes with minimal side absorptions, in order to provide color photographic images having well reproduced colors.
On the other hand, preservability of the color photographic image is also extremely important, and the color photographic images formed should have good preservability under various conditions.
In order to improve preservability, it is necessary not only to delay fading or color changing rates of color dyes of different hues, but that the fading rates of each color forming the image be as uniform as possible, to preserve the color balance of the remaining dye image.
However, conventional light-sensitive materials, particularly color papers, suffer serious deterioration of the cyan dye image after long time dark fading due to the influence of humidity and heat, thus exhibiting a change in color balance and, therefore, require improvement. On the other hand, conventional color dyes scarcely fading in the dark have the contrary disadvantages of poor color hues and cyan dye images which fade or disappear on exposure to light. For these reasons, it is desired to develop color photographic light-sensitive materials overcoming these problems.
Specific combinations of couplers have been proposed to partly solve these problems, as disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Publication No. 7344/77, Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 200037/82 and 57238/84 (the term "OPI" as used herein refers to a "published unexamined Japanese patent application open to public inspection"), and Japanese Patent Application No. 35178/83. However, these combinations provide only insufficient color forming properties or provide dyes of poor hue, thus being unsatisfactory for color reproduction. Particularly, the color balance of residual dye images produced by conventional coupler combinations changes as a result of deterioration on exposure to light or heat. Therefore, improvement of the combination is desired.